I find myself doing a bit more sailboat work than usual this year. If you’re not down at the yacht club yourself tinkering away, you’ve at least started thinking about it. All this boat work reminded me of a great little resource I’ve had hidden in the depths of some old computer folders. If you’ve been wondering what the optimal set of tools is for working on your boat, I present you with…Mike Martin’s Toolbox!
Who the heck is Mike Martin and why should I care about his toolbox you ask?
Well, what a lot of Martin 242 sailors don’t realize is that we only sail in the second coolest one design boat in the world. Taking first place, of course, is the venerable International 5o5. For reference, here’s a photo of two anonymous sailors (who may or may not also be members of the M242 class) ripping in a 505:
Mike Martin is one of the undisputed legends of the 505 class. In a class replete with Olympians, world champions, and pro sailors taking time off to have some real fun; Mike has won 5 world championships, and is the only person to have won both as crew and as skipper. The 5o5 is also an impossibly rigged boat – surpassed in complexity perhaps only by a NASA shuttle – so it requires endless hours of tinkering. As a consequence, I don’t think you can really go wrong with the set of tools in this list (originally published in an old usa505.org article). I’ve taken the liberty of annotating which tools I think are required for working on your M242 and which are nice to have, and which I also carry permanently on board. Also added a few extras not on the original list but useful nonetheless. Enjoy!
